The literary lions, left to right, Dennis Duggan, Judy Joice, Pete
Hamill and Frank McCourt at Barnes & Noble's special tribute to the
Lion's Head.

By Dennis Duggan

For thirty glorious years the Lion’s
Head in Greenwich Village was the city’s premier watering hole for
editors, reporters, columnists, copyreaders, and photographers from the
city’s mainstream newspapers and the weekly Village Voice whose office
nestled against the Christopher Street pub.

There was nothing like it anywhere else
in New York or in any other city for that matter.
Newspapermen and women who fought bare-knuckled over stories for their
respective papers by day, stood shoulder to shoulder at the long, wooden bar
by night, cracking wise, singing Irish war songs, and crowing over their
latest exclusive in that day’s newspapers.

They were the core of a crowd that
included famous names from the worlds of literature, politics, music, and
art, people like playwright Lanford Wilson, and writers like Norman Mailer, Nick
Tosches, David Markson and Frederick Exley. They streamed into the welcoming
saloon-- the preferred word for the "Head" as the regulars called
it -- thanks to a song sung by Frank Sinatra called "Saloon" and
sung best by Albany author William Kennedy, a Sinatraphile.

They came up from the New York Post then
on South
Street,
and down from the New York Daily News then on East 42nd Street, the New York Herald Tribune and the New York
Times, and Newsday, all from around Times Square,
and from the Voice.

They came to the head because as Pete
Hamill of the Post, Newsday, New YorkNewsday
and the News wrote, it was "Great, Good Place."

In his book "A Drinking Life,"
(Little, Brown & Co.) Hamill wrote this about the head:

"I don’t think many New York bars
ever had such a glorious mixture of newspapermen, painters, musicians,
seamen, ex-communists, priests and nuns, athletes, stockbrokers, politicians
and folksingers, bound together in the leveling democracy of drink."

While each of the newspapers had their
"own" pubs, The Post Mortem for the Post, the Artist & Writers
at the back door of the Tribune, Louie’s East behind the News, and Goff’s
across the street from the Times, the head became a common ground gathering
place, a kind ofNew England village green, where bylines met bylines in the
flesh.

In one corner you could watch the Post’s
Pete Hamill demonstrate boxing moves -- he and a few other writers owned a
boxer -- and Pete boxed for tuition money in Mexico where he studied for a time. In another, there
was Vic Ziegel, now a Daily News sports columnist, interviewing Don King, the
fight promoter, and Jerry Cooney, another Great White Hope who couldn’t live
up to the hype.

The Head became an extension of the city
rooms of the papers. Newsday knew I could be reached there if a story was
breaking and I was needed. Sportswriter Larry Merchant brought his portable
type writer with him some nights and typed his story at a table in the back
room sometimes against the sound of the Clancy Brothers singing a rousing
version of "The Leaving of Liverpool," or Frank McCourt standing up
and singing about his Irish mother "far from home," asking him to
"send all you can" (here his listeners would leave dollar bills) or
even Dave Amram playing his French horn while singer Jerry Jeff Walker sang
about a man named "Bojangles."

You never knew what would happen on any
given night at the head, a half block up from the Stonewall and next door to
the "55," then owned by jazz buff Bradley Cunningham. The only
visible trace of the head which folded in 1996 is a sign on a traffic pole
put up by the city which reads: "Wes Joice Corner." Joice a
taciturn former cop was one of the founding partners of the place along with
first, Leon Seidel, a community activist, and then, Al Koblin and later, Mike
Reardon.

But for the price of a few drinks, you
could be treated to a concert by the bands that dropped in from time to time
like the Dubliners, an impromptu word riff by Joe Flaherty then writing for
the Village Voice and later the author of several novels, a lecture about the
Irish opera tenor John McCormack by a partisan, or one of the newspaper
adventures of Steve Dunleavy of the Post.

And always, there were the men and women
of the press, still living up to their reputations as hard-boiled, hard drinking
and often profane and sacrilegious people who would kill for a scoop.

It was at the Head, for instance, that I
first heard of a corruption scandal in the 77th precinct in Brooklyn. I took that overheard tip toNew York
Newsday and city editor John Cotter where I was then a city columnist, and in
no time at all Mike McAlary and Bob Drury had the story first about a bunch
of rogue cops who called themselves "Buddy Boys."

That became the title of McAlary’s first
book and when it was published there was a party at the Head attended by
several of the Buddy Boys, two of whom committed suicide.

McAlary went on to win a Pulitzer and he
signed his book, "To Dennis. This is your city, these are your streets,
I’m just renting."

In March where I went to cover the Sean
(Puffy) Combs trial for gun possession and attempted bribery, I sat one row
in front of John Miller, former Deputy Police Commissioner under William
Bratton, who often came to the Head.

Miller, now with ABC-TV, told me that he
was envious of the book covers on the wall of the Head. "I told Wes
(Joice) that most of the books seemed to be written by newspaper people. I
asked him if he would put a cover of my book when I wrote it on that wall.

"Wes looked at me and shook his
head," Miller recalls. "John," he said, "you are a
television reporter. If you even read a book, I’ll put its cover up
there."

The wit could be cruel or funny at the
Head. Flaherty, a onetime longshoreman who went for an interview with Village
Voice publisher Dan Wolf carrying his hook (he later became campaign manager
for Norman Mailer when he ran for mayor) claimed that Cardinal Spellman had
died of a "poisoned altar boy."

It didn’t matter who you were, how high
or low, you had to be able to stand up to the verbal assaults that took place
day and night. When Mayor John Lindsay came to the Head one Ash Wednesday,
George Kimball (now with the Boston Globe) anointed him on the forehead with
ashes taken from an ashtray.

The Head was a home away from home for
many of its regulars. "I called one night from Florida where I was covering spring training for the
Mets and the Yankees, just to hear a New York voice," Ziegel said. The bartender would
turn the phone over to Doug Ireland, the political writer and later manager
for one of Bella Abzug’s campaigns, or John Bergen, a dock worker built like
an icebox with a raspy voice developed on the streets of Brooklyn.

It wouldn’t have been as popular though
if some of the most beautiful, talented and witty women in town didn’t make
the place a regular stop. There was the painter Anita Steckel, whose work was
recently shown in a Soho art gallery, and whose drawings were hung in the
back room alongside a big wooden table. One of them featured a building with
a phallic symbol at the top and if you read Edward Hoagland’s latest book
titled "Compass" you will read about his affair with Steckel.

But affairs were as common as quips at
the Head. Sometimes they had a La Ronde quality -- that was the French film
which had loves getting on and off a carousel and changing partners. Some
late nights the affairs were celebrated publicly in the back room, or in a
storage room under the bar.

Women poets, writers, newspaperwomen,
actresses (Jessica Lange worked there as a waitress) came to the Head for the
talk as well as the action. Hamill, was watched closely because he had
romanced some big names including Jackie Kennedy and Shirley ("Out On a
Limb") MacLaine. When he broke up with the dance/actress and
MacLaine was writing a new book I asked John Hamill, Pete’s brother what she
was going to call it. "Further out on a Limb," he quipped.

The reporters at the Head mingled with
offbeat priests like Father Peter Jacobs who opened his own bar on Restaurant
Row on West 46th right next door to the Front Page where Sidney Zion,
formerly of the Timesand now with the Post, and liberal nuns
held forth each night. Like Kennedy and Hamill, who wrote a book "Why
Sinatra Matters," Zion
was a Sinatra follower. You could hear only Sinatra records on his jukebox.
When the head shuttered its doors the Times ran a story, "The Lion
Sleeps Tonight," quoting the brothers McCourt, Malachy and Frank on the
place.

Malachy recalled bringing his mother
Angela (of "Angela’s Ashes" fame) to the Head. A young woman
professor from Wales joined the party and lectured a bewildered
Angela on life saying that all things have life, including rocks, trees and
plants.

"Do you talk to your plants Mrs.
McCourt?,” the woman asked.

"No I don’t replied Angela. I live
alone."

It was from their mother that the McCourts
were given the gift of wit even though Angela once described her sons saying,
"they are a crucifixion to me."

Frank McCourt, who met his wife there,
told a paper that the men’s room at the Head had the "most literate,
witty graffiti…but when they heard Bobby Kennedy was coming, they cleaned it
up."

He recalled one of the erased lines that
read: "My mother made me a homosexual."

Under it was written, "If I sent
her some wool, would she make me one too?"

On the door of Room Nine at City Hall
where the press gathers each day to cover the goings-on at City Hall there is
a sign that read " R.I.P. "It lists all the nine New York
newspapers that bit the dust including the World Telegram, the JournalAmerican,
the Daily Mirror (where I worked as a copyboy way back when) and New York
Newsday which died the year before the Head.)

They ought to put the Lion’s Head on
that door, too. It was as much a part of the lives of the reporters like
Normand Poirier, Gene Grove, Tommy Topor, Bill Hoffman, Warren Berry, Cynthia
Fagin, Claudia Dreifus, Sheila McKenna, Michael Daley, Jim Dwyer, Pat Owens,
Ken McKenna, Michael McGovern, and all the other members of the daily press
who, like coal miners, go out onto the streets each day to try and dig up the
nuggets that turn into headlines.

I miss each and every one of them, even
the ones who beat me out on stories. I miss people like Ace Gillen who
delivered the very best line about the Head when he said, "The Lion’s
Head is a place where the Jews drink like the Irish and the Irish write like
the Jews."

And, as the poet, sea captain and
bartender at the Head, Paul Schiffman, often told me, "Live forever,
kid!"